Chapter 165: Wendigo?

『"A what now?"』

"Meredith?" Amara walked over with Ethan and hugged the scarred woman before pulling back. "What are you doing here?"

Meredith held out her phone. "Your Institute-issued communication devices weren’t being answered." She folded her arms. "So I thought I’d come looking for the five of you."

Sophia’s eyebrow went up. "You mean our phones?"

At this point, Raj was descending from the control room. He waved to Meredith and held up all their phones. "We left them back there while we trained."

"I see," Meredith said.

Amara shook her head. "I’m glad you’re here, but that’s not what I meant."

Her eyebrows pulled together as she gnawed on her bottom lip. "I mean, what are you doing here-here?" She glanced around meaningfully. "Out in the open."

Hiro stepped in. "I believe what she’s trying to say is, why aren’t you in some secret bunker in space or something?" His voice dropped. "Aren’t you like... wanted by the Apostles?"

Meredith smiled faintly. "If I spend the rest of my life hiding, then they’ve already won." She shrugged. "Besides... I still have a duty as an Awakener of the Institute."

Raj’s smile disappeared. "Their deadline isn’t far off anymore." He looked toward Meredith. "Only a few days left."

Ethan placed both hands in his pockets. "You said we had a situation?"

"Yes." Meredith turned around to leave the ARTE. "Let’s go to the Command Center."

They all nodded and followed behind.

As they walked, Raj began handing everyone’s phones back. "Here," he said as he handed each of them their phones.

Amara unlocked hers and found a long list of missed messages ordering them to report to the Command Center for a briefing.

"No kidding," she muttered, scrolling through them.

Meanwhile, Hiro slowed his pace until he was walking beside Raj. "So?" he asked quietly, nudging him with an elbow.

Raj blinked. "So...?"

"How did the texting go? Because you were up there for a while." Hiro poked Raj in the arm with a finger. "I still don’t know about Naomi though."

Realization dawned on Raj’s face. "Oh." He scratched the back of his neck. "Naomi?" He shook his head. "Nah. I wasn’t texting Naomi."

Hiro raised an eyebrow. "...Really? ’Cause you sorta made it sound like we knew who you were talking about."

"Nope." Raj shrugged casually. "Didn’t really pan out with Naomi."

Hiro sighed. "...Man," he muttered. "Am I glad to hear that."

Raj looked at him sideways. "That’s... a weird reaction."

"But wait." Hiro’s brows furrowed as he got more curious. "If it’s not Naomi, then who is it?"

Raj grinned. "I was talking about Jessica."

Hiro’s lips bent. "...Who the hell’s Jessica?"

The question was loud enough for everyone except Meredith to hear. One by one, heads turned toward Raj as they continued walking down the corridor.

Raj sighed dramatically. "You guys remember the Howl Pact?"

"The werewolf pack?" Amara asked.

"The one from Janestown?" Ethan added.

Raj nodded. "Remember their hot Alpha who almost got into it with Ethan?" Raj grinned. "Yeah, that’s Jessica."

The hallway fell silent for a moment before Sophia snorted. "Wait, you mean the chick who tried to rip your face off?"

Raj smiled sheepishly. "Yeah..." His gaze went distant for a second as he tried to recollect. "After things settled down, I sort of got her number."

"Sort of, huh?" Ethan said.

"She’s pretty awesome when you get to know her," Raj said.

"Like I said," Hiro immediately rested his arm over Raj’s shoulder as they walked, "you need help."

Amara cleared her throat. "We just don’t want you getting hurt Raj."

Before anyone could interrogate him further, Meredith stopped outside a pair of massive reinforced doors.

She placed a card against the access panel and the doors slid open with a deep mechanical rumble.

"We’re here," she said.

Instantly, every playful conversation died away as they stepped into the Command Center.

Meredith approached the central display and pulled up a map. The image expanded, showing a region that piqued Amara’s curiosity.

Rural America. The kind of place where highways gave way to county roads that gave way to dirt paths leading to towns that barely qualified as dots on any official map.

"Here," Meredith said, zooming in on a specific location. "This is the kind of place where people still use landlines and consider strangers with suspicion."

She pulled up a secondary display showing incident reports of handwritten pages that had been scanned and digitized, the text almost illegible in places.

"Seven missing persons in the last month," Meredith continued. "All hunters or hikers who went into the woods and never came back."

"You know, nowadays, that kind of weird is just right up our alley," Hiro said with a smug grin on his face.

Meredith nodded. "Local sheriff filed reports, but state police wrote it off as people getting lost in the wilderness. Happens more often than you’d think in areas like this."

Sophia folded her arms. "But you don’t think they got lost."

"I know they didn’t." Meredith pulled up satellite imaging, and the display shifted to show aerial footage of dense forest, rocky terrain, and a cave system visible as dark spots against the tree cover.

Then she played the footage forward, and something moved.

It was blurry, and whatever it was moved too fast for the satellite’s refresh rate, or maybe it was naturally difficult to perceive.

Amara caught glimpses of something large and bipedal. It loped through the trees with disturbing speed, heading directly toward the cave’s entrance.

"What in all that is holy is that?" Hiro asked, leaning closer to the display like proximity would somehow make the image clearer.

Sophia went very still, her face pale. Then she looked at Hiro. "Still think that’s right up our alley?"

Everyone turned to look at her.

"That..." Sophia’s voice cracked. "...that’s—that’s a fucking wendigo."

"A what now?" Raj asked.

Meredith’s expression confirmed Sophia’s identification. "Wendigo. North American cryptid, though calling it that undersells how dangerous it actually is."

"These were humans who resorted to cannibalism and were transformed into something worse. Something that’s always hungry and can never be satisfied."

Ethan folded his arms. "Indigenous peoples across the northern regions have stories about them." His eyes narrowed. "I take it this is the situation?"

She pulled up additional files of incident reports dating back decades, centuries, sketches and descriptions that varied in detail but shared common elements.

Emaciated humanoid forms with bone protrusions. Skin pulled tight over skeletal frames. Eyes that reflected light like an animal’s. And always, always, the hunger.

"They’re fast, strong, and intelligent enough to hunt in patterns," Meredith continued. "Most sightings are dismissed as folklore or misidentified wildlife."

"Surprise, surprise." Hiro rolled his eyes. "People just think they’re campfire stories."

Meredith nodded. "And that’s exactly how the Institute prefers it."

Sophia frowned. "Because panic’s harder to contain than monsters."

"Exactly." Meredith tapped the display again. "The Institute’s been tracking genuine wendigo activity for over a century."

A new map appeared, dotted with dozens of old sightings scattered across North America.

"This," she said, highlighting a single flashing marker, "is the first confirmed sighting in this region in nearly three decades."

Raj let out a low whistle. "...Talk about bad timing."

"Or good timing," Ethan said quietly.

Everyone looked at him.

"If it’s resurfaced now, there’ll probably be more," Ethan explained.

Meredith gave a small approving nod. "That’s one possibility."

Amara stepped forward. "So what’s the plan?" She glanced at the projection. "Track it, eliminate it, recover any survivors if there are any?"

"Track and assess first," Meredith corrected. She enlarged another file showing claw marks carved into thick tree trunks. "Wendigos are unpredictable."

She swiped again. "Some are barely sentient, just hunger given form. Others retain enough human intelligence to be genuinely troublesome."

She dismissed the displays and turned to face them fully. "This is a learning opportunity. But make no mistake, this thing has killed seven people that we know of."

Raj rubbed his palms together. "And probably a lot more we haven’t found yet."

Meredith gave him a small nod. "It’s not going to surrender or negotiate." She paused. "So when we do find it, it’s our job to end it."

The Five exchanged glances, excitement warring with appropriate caution.

"Gear up," Meredith commanded. Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "and someone find Ishigami." She looked directly at Ethan. "Tell him he’s coming too. His strings are perfect for tracking through dense terrain."

Hiro’s eyes immediately lit up. "He’s here?"

Sophia visibly stiffened. "...Seriously?"

Hiro looked at her, confused by the reaction. "What?"

Sophia placed a hand on her hip. "You sound way too happy about that."

"I mean..." Hiro blinked. "He’s a misunderstood dude. I’m sure if you got to kn—"

Sophia lifted an eyebrow. "He’s insufferable," she cut him off.

"I’m just saying—"

Sophia scoffed. "Look at you acting all excited like a kid on Christmas. I bet you just wanna kiss him don’t you?"

"The fuck?" Hiro did about twenty blinks per second. "He’s like my Yoda-dude!"

Sophia folded her arms. "Sure... that’s definitely all it is."

Hiro looked helplessly toward Ethan. "Dude... a little help here?"

Ethan wisely chose not to get involved.

Amara, however, smiled sympathetically. "For someone who’s a self-proclaimed detective..." She shook her head. "...you’re incredibly clueless."

Hiro stared after her. "...What does that even mean?"

Nobody answered him.

Sophia had already turned and was walking toward the lockers, and Amara caught up beside her, leaving Hiro standing there with a dumbfounded expression.

As they moved, Amara turned to Sophia. "Any thoughtful family stories you wanna share about wendigos?"

"Be careful with this one," Sophia said quietly. "Wendigos aren’t just monsters. They’re cursed. And curses have a way of spreading."

Amara grinned. "When have we never not-not been careful?"

"Yeah," Sophia said, but she didn’t sound convinced. Then she stretched out her fist. "To being not-not careful."

Amara bumped her fist with hers, a small smile on her face. "To being not-not careful."